


White Collar

by romanticalgirl



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Family, Gen, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: If there's one thing the Thrombey-Drysdale family is good at, besides murder, it's words. Sharp as knives. As far as Ransom knows, the most she's ever spoken is the six words that put him in prison.But then, she wouldn't be a Thrombey if there wasn't a twist.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 322





	White Collar

He’s in a low-security, white-collar prison. The confession they have on tape is him saying “Yeah, I killed Fran, but I guess I didn’t.”, which his lawyer managed to twist into him not actually saying he did it. It wasn’t enough to get him off scot-free, since apparently Drysdales and Thrombeys don’t have peers, so a bunch of Boston liberals were on the jury.

He’s been here a month and a half of a five year sentence. He imagines he’ll be out by the three month mark. He’s going to have to change his life, but he’s resourceful. Always has been.

“Drysdale! You got a visitor.”

Ransom looks up from the book he’s reading - Agatha Christie because, if nothing else, he has a goddamned sense of humor - at the guard. “Tell them to go away.”

“It’s some old lady. Says she’s your great-grandmother.”

Ransom winces, folding over the corner of the page to mark his spot, drops the book on his sad excuse for a bed and gets to his feet. “She actually said that?”

“No. The kid with her did.”

“Little Nazi shit?”

“Nah. Dark haired girl.”

“Ah, Meg.” He follows the guard down the hall. The thought of anyone, even his half-blind great-grandmother, seeing him in prison gray is enough to make him shudder, but it’s not like he can actually say no. The room they show him in to is the same drab as the rest of the prison, but there’s a long steel table with chairs on either side and, across from the table, opposite the door he walks in, is Nana.

“Ransom? Is that you?”

“Hey, Nana.” He sits down, sprawling in the chair and ignoring the guard. His great-grandmother has been old since Ransom was born, but now she looks even older. The yellow lighting and concrete walls don’t help, but it’s more than that. “How’s tricks?”

She doesn’t say anything, just tilts her head to the side. Her hat slides a little, but whatever pins she’s using manage to hold it in place for the most part. He’s not sure if she has a bunch of identical outfits or if she just has the one she wears over and over. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her in anything else.

When Ransom was three, he’d pissed off his dad and his granddad’s study was locked, so he’d rushed into the music room. Nana was sitting in her usual chair, listening to a scratchy record. He’d gotten down on the floor and crawled under her chair, hidden behind her legs. His dad had stormed into the room and yelled for him. Ransom had shivered, not wanting to be found, not wanted his father to spank him or, worse, tell his mom. He wasn’t even sure what he’d done. His dad had eventually left and his nana had moved one of her feet to the side. 

“Ransom, is that you?”

When he’d crawled out from under the chair, she’d been looking down at him. Her eyes always seemed far away, but in that moment, he’d felt safe. He’d crawled up onto the chair next to her and fallen asleep pressed to her side, surrounded by the smell of berries and cream.

He can still smell it on her. It always made him feel safe. It always let him breathe in his granddad’s house. She was an island in the spewing sea of hatred that was constantly frothing in the house. Now he can’t stand it.

“Talked to Blanc lately? Tell him I did anything else?” He smirks at her, doesn’t care if she can’t see. “Not sure how many years I’d get for drinking Granddad’s alcohol and smoking his pipe when I was twelve, but you caught me doing that, so might as well see.” 

She doesn’t say anything. She never does.

To him.

“I always thought I was something special, you know? I never heard you say anything to anyone else. It was always me that you talked to. I mean, you didn’t say much. Pretty much the same thing over and over. And half the time it wasn’t to me. I mean, she didn’t look anything like me, but you called her Ransom, didn’t you? Thanks for that, by the way.”

She tilts her head the other way and her hat settles back firmly in its place. Ransom lets out a bitter huff of laughter. She blinks at him behind her thick glasses.

“You talked to him though, huh? Or did you think he was me too? Though how you could hear that voice and think it was me, I can’t imagine. I bet he said yes when you asked him if he was me. What’d he tell you, Nana? What sweet little things did he say in your ear? I have no doubt they were sweet. He was practically drooling honey onto her. A good nurse. A nice person. No one’s that innocent.”

“Ransom?”

He exhales, blowing the breath out sharply. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

The words hit him like a punch in the chest, knocking the air out of him the way landing after lunging at Marta had. “What did you say?”

He’d run away from home when he was eleven. His parents were sending him to boarding school because they were too busy to actually raise a child. He hadn’t wanted to go. He had wanted to live with his granddad and write novels and be famous. Instead he’d had to break in through the back window to get away from the dogs, and sneak down the short hall to the pantry.

He climbed on top of the shelves and taken the bag of his granddad’s favorite cookies before climbing down and hunching in the corner, eating them methodically, one by one. He’d made himself sick and he’d been in the bathroom throwing up when he’d heard her shuffle in. She sat on the edge of the tub and stroked his hair back. 

She hadn’t said anything, not even his name that time, but she’d let him cry, let him soak the hem of her dress with his tears until it felt like he’d used them all up. When he’d finished, she got to her feet and held her hand out to him. He’d taken it, and she’d let him into the kitchen. She’d made him a cup of hot chocolate and herself a cup of tea, and then she’d sat down across from him. 

The next week, he went to boarding school. 

He never cried again.

“You don’t get to be sorry. You’re part of the reason I’m in here. Because you saw me. Because you saw her. Because you told him.” He digs his thumbnail into a gouge in the table. His nails are rough, not manicured. “So much for family loyalty, huh? Of course, I was hoping she’d kill Granddad. Guess I don’t have much room to talk. She turned the tables though. Allowances for the whole family. Well, Mom and Walt and Meg. Screw Jacob and Donna and Joni and Dad. You, I guess. I can imagine she’s taking care of you. Hell, you’re her alibi, right?”

He’d been twenty-two and high as fuck. He’d stumbled in the front door of his granddad’s house, gone down on his knees, and started giggling. He didn’t remember stopping, he didn’t remember passing out. He didn’t remember anything when he woke up in the hospital with a tube in his nose, a pumped stomach, and a headache the size of his granddad’s fortune. 

The lights were dimmed and there was the steady beep of a monitor that seemed extra loud in the quiet. He’d turned his head and, instead of his mother or father or some peon they’d sent to make sure he didn’t discharge himself, his great-grandmother was sitting there. Her head was bowed forward, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she was snoring softly.

He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was sure she was the one who’d called the ambulance. Her hand, small and wrinkled and impossibly pale, was lying on the bed, settled on the sheet near his hip. 

He’d reached down and taken her hand in his. She had snuffled in her sleep, but hadn’t awakened. Ransom had watched her until he couldn’t stay awake anymore.

“Ransom.”

He physically jerks when she says his name, when her hand settles on the table between them. He sniffs and blinks hard, keeping his eyes closed for a few long moments to make sure he’s under control.When he opens them, her hand is still in the middle of the table. More wrinkled, smaller, delicate, and still pale, but it doesn’t shake. 

He can’t help but reach out, can’t help but curve his hand around hers. He stares at her small hand engulfed in his.

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

His head snaps up, his eyes going to hers. He doesn’t know if there actually is a small tilt to the corner of her mouth or if he’s imagining it. He swallows hard and has to look away, turn his head and blink back the burn of tears he’s kept buried. “What?”

“The man.” He sucks in a breath, keeping a tenuous hold on his control. He expects her to stop, but she keeps going. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

He looks up and inhales sharply, blinking against the light. Some weight he didn’t even realize he was carrying sloughs off Ransom’s shoulders and he nods his head once.

“Time to go, Drysdale. Back to the cell.”

Ransom squeezes his grandmother’s hand and stands up, reluctant to let her go. He can hate Blanc, he can hate Marta, he can hate his granddad, but the most painful knife slips free as she looks up at him as he stands. 

“Ransom.”

He puts his hand on the inside of the wall by the door to keep from leaving the room. “Nana?”

“You always were my favorite.” She stands up and shuffles to the opposite door. 

“Yeah?” His voice breaks.

“Still are.”


End file.
